A good Ad agency can take a business and propel its success forward in ways that few other business partners can do. If the business is one that will benefit from promotion or advertising, the right AD agency bring to the table the talent, the creativity and the resources to put together just the right advertising campaign and then to deploy it in a way that is a perfect fit for the business’s marketing objectives and for the market that the business serves.

But for every success story of how an AD agency took a business to the next level of success, there are plenty of horror stories of terrible advertising campaigns. A bad advertising strategy not only fail to escalate the sales and success of the business, it may damage the business in the eyes of the consumer and cause damage that could take years to fix.

There comes a time in the life of any business when the decision is made to either employ the business’s first AD agency or to change agencies to find one that can fit the marketing objectives of the company. To be sure that this process results in one of those success stories and not one of those horror tales, some precautions are in order such as…

§ Nail down the company’s marketing objectives before you meet with candidate agencies. Don’t allow the AD agency to dictate what your marketing goals are. By taking charge of what you want before you begin the process, the chances of finding just the right agency are vastly improved.

§ Put together a review committee for the search process of finding the right agency. This team is well informed about the company objectives and the marketing goals that lead to the decision to bring an AD agency on. They can be kept together throughout the selection process so you have wisdom from many different parts of the company management structure to guide the process.

§ Nail down the budget for the project before you put the invitations out to AD agencies to bid on your business. If you know exactly how much you can spend, that will help in the selection of the right agency and in setting their limitations early in the relationship.

§ Establish the schedule of how long you have find an AD agency and then the time frame they have to put a campaign together, get it approved, produced and activated so the outcome is in sync with the company objectives. If you have a major product announcement coming along, the time to start finding an AD agency is months before the week when the product goes public. By timing the project so adequate time is allowed for each step, you don’t rush the process and end up with an inferior promotion which will result in unsatisfactory results.

§ Make sure the AD agencies you invite to bid on the business understand your business, what you do, the product to be promoted, your market and your business image. They should also be aware of previous marketing efforts that were done by the business. If the previous efforts were successful, there may be a strong tie in to the next promotion that would work well. If that last promotion was bad or needs major improvement, the AD agency should know that so they can steer clear of the same mistakes.

By doing some planning up front and being ready when you begin to bring AD agencies in to discuss your goals, you will vastly improve your chances of selecting the right firm. And by finding the right AD agency, you vastly improve the success your advertising will bring to the company which can be a tremendous boost to the corporate profitability.